artschool00856_mk.JPG The Star Motel on Lombard street is the Academy of Art University of San Francisco's newest property and they are now using it as a freshman dormitory. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has become a huge growing part of San Francisco Culture. 9/8/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00856_mk.JPG The Star Motel on Lombard street is the...

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artschool00511_mk.JPG Academy of Art University freshman, Bob Leduc-Reasoner, 18, surrounded by his newest friends at the Star Motel, the Academy's newest property being used as a dormitory, says he is really excited to be there and is certain he and his friends will be having more fun than other freshmen at the school. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has become a huge growing part of San Francisco Culture. 9/4/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00511_mk.JPG Academy of Art University freshman, Bob...

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artschool00247_mk.JPG Academy of Art University Freshman, Miranda Wiley, 21, who has a full scholarship to play basketball for the school, takes an empty Academy bus to basketball practice weeks before her classes in fashion design are scheduled to start. The sports program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco is one of the newest additions to the school. Alao the school spreads out over the entire city of San Francisco and relies on a school run bus system to move students to their classes.
8/9/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00247_mk.JPG Academy of Art University Freshman, Miranda...

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artschool00320_mk.JPG On student orientation day at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Nyoka Jameson,a first time graduate student, here for painting from Bakersfield, Calif., looks for the correct Academy bus to take her to the Fine Arts building for the first time.
9/4/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle Nyoka Jameson (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00320_mk.JPG On student orientation day at the Academy of...

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artschool00638_mk.JPG On the first day classes at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, on New Montgomery street, new students orient themselves while waiting for an Academy bus to take them where they need to go.
9/6/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00638_mk.JPG On the first day classes at the Academy of...

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artschool00650_mk.JPG One of many signs blanketing New Montgomery in San Francisco, Calif. is proof that the Academy of Art University has become a huge growing part of San Francisco Culture. 9/6/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00650_mk.JPG One of many signs blanketing New Montgomery...

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Portrait of Elise Stephens and her son Richard, President of the Academy of Art University, at her home, which is known as the Jewel Box on Nob Hill.
Photo: Mark Costantini / S.F. Chronicle

Photo: Mark Costantini

Portrait of Elise Stephens and her son Richard, President of the...

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academy09-30-2007_017_mac.jpg Stephens with a 1934 Packard Victoria. Dick Stephens, the owner of the Academy of Art University will be visiting the car museum he runs at the Academy auto design campus in an old car dealership on Van Ness. There is a showroom full of pristine Packards, Cadillacs, Mercedes, etc. which will show how rich Stephens has gotten owning and expanidng this private art school into a real estate holding company. Stephens is in semi-retirement and his daughter Elisa runs the school. Photographed in, San Francisco, Ca, on 7/17/07. Photo by: Michael Macor/ The Chronicle

Photo: Michael Macor

academy09-30-2007_017_mac.jpg Stephens with a 1934 Packard...

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artschool01107_mk.JPG With graduate students Yuni Hong, Sola Sawyer and Bernardo Warman watching intently, Lis Berrett, Asst. director of the School of Illustrations at the Academy of Art University, leads a drawing lesson during a clothed model figure drawing class on the top floor of the Illustration building on Powell Street. 9/14/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

artschool00038_mk.JPG Moments before she is scheduled to make her class presentation, Kat Adams, a 2D Animation graduate student at Academy of Art University, feverishly works to finish her final project for a summer session animation class. After a year of classes in San Francisco Adams plans to finish her degree online from her new home in Florida. - The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has become a huge growing part of San Francisco Culture. 8/9/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00038_mk.JPG Moments before she is scheduled to make her...

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artschool00449_mk.JPG On student orientation day in the fine arts building, Academy of Art University graduate painting student, Karina Svalya goes over a lists of art supplies she need for the new semester. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has become a huge growing part of San Francisco Culture. 9/4/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00449_mk.JPG On student orientation day in the fine arts...

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artschool00758_mk.JPG During the first week of classes, students walk past one of the infamous Academy of Art University of San Francisco insignia plastered up and down the street on New Montgomery in San Francisco. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has become a huge growing part of San Francisco Culture. 9/7/07. Mike Kepka/The Chronicle (cq)

Photo: Mike Kepka

artschool00758_mk.JPG During the first week of classes, students...

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Academy of Art University properties in San Francisco. Chronicle Graphic

In late August, the Star Motel closed down after 47 years on the Lombard strip. A week later, the first student-resident was having a smoke on the patio atop the carport. The red neon flickered "No Vacancy" - the Academy of Art University had staked a beachhead on the Marina.

At the same time, the for-profit school quietly acquired the Rincon Lofts to billet the overflow. At about 7:45 Monday morning, those familiar black vans with the red-and-white seal on the side will form a pincer movement bringing students up from the bay and down from Rincon Hill to link up with many hundreds more falling out of Academy dorms in the downtown stronghold.

By day's end, 25 buses of all sizes - up to half of them new white biodiesels - will have moved 7,000 or 8,000 passengers between 29 (or is it 30 or 33?) scattered buildings, which constitute the largest private art school in the country, and perhaps the largest university of any kind without a central campus to call home.

As the school runs its morning transit system, Academy of Art University President Dr. Elisa Stephens will start her day at her "Jewel Box" on Nob Hill, three blocks upslope from the Sutter Street dorms. She has an academic institution to run and she puts in 50-60 hours a week, counting time spent in class. She also has a family business to grow and, if looked at as a purely capitalist enterprise, the Academy model is so clever that building No. 30 (or is it 31 or 34?) ought to be a business school.

Elisa, her father Richard A. Stephens and her brother, Scott Stephens, own the company. Their customers are the students, and there are never enough of them. They are charged $600 per unit ($700 for graduate students) for a full-time tuition of $14,400 a year. At face value, that is a discount of up to 50 percent off the going rate (see box, Page 16), so students only have to feel half as bad if they never go to class.

"It's guaranteed that you'll pretty much go right into a job in the field that you want," says Kelly Lundeen, 19, a freshman from Loveland, Colo., living at "the Star Scene," as its 100 tenants have already nicknamed it, while studying cinematography. The Academy says 80 percent of its graduates find work "for pay" in their artistic disciplines.

An offer this good has attracted more than 11,000 students this fall, on-site and online, up 15 percent from last year. There is no floor to admissions and there is no ceiling to enrollment. "You're going to improve starting with the first class because you'll learn how to properly hold the pencil," President Stephens told 1,700 new students at orientation earlier this month at the Masonic Auditorium.

Once in San Francisco, the students need a place to study, so the Stephenses keep buying commercial and industrial real estate. The students need housing, so the Stephenses buy or lease apartment buildings and hotels and rent the rooms to their students. They've got themselves covered on all sides. The deal is bulletproof. The Academy employs 2,203 people, not counting the bartenders, baristas, burrito-stuffers and security guards who service the student body.

"There is no art school as big as this. Period," claims Elisa, who, with her father, the chairman emeritus, plans to make it bigger by adding major college sports with all the publicity and extra students and staff that generates.

As it is, the Stephenses have done well by this enterprise. If you round their attendance off at 10,000 students who each pay an average of $10,000 a year, that's $100 million before costs. As a private concern they don't have to reveal profits, but $8 million in spit-polished classic cars in the window of their auto showroom on Van Ness Avenue tells you something. It tells you that they are not understated.

Anyone who comes to San Francisco sees that the red-and-black Academy crest gives Starbucks' green a run for the money. Some buildings have the white circle "A" stamped on in numbing repetition. The Academy architecture department at Fisherman's Wharf has bigger and louder signs than any chain hotel down there. The ubiquity has finally grabbed the attention of city planners, who have launched an offensive against the Academy over the signage and usage of its buildings.

There is something about the Academy to bother just about everyone, starting with the black buses that always seem to have nobody aboard while clogging up traffic. Even the name, the Academy of Art University, is a redundancy. It was more tolerable as the Academy of Art College, but it would probably be more popular if it had stuck to its original name - Academy of Advertising Art.

This was what Richard S. Stephens called it in 1929, when he came home from Paris, an aspiring Left Bank painter who lost his $50,000 cushion in the stock market crash. An Oakland kid, he met his wife, Clara Gil, a nurse from Concord, when they were both serving in the armed forces in World War I.

"His philosophy with the school was that people could make a living as artists," says the founder's son, also named Richard, while sitting on a car seat at the back of an old Plymouth and Dodge showroom on Van Ness Avenue, now the Academy department of industrial design. His daughter is at his side, nodding approvingly at his reminiscences. It is a rare sighting. For all the market saturation of the Academy brand, the owners of that brand are unenthused about personal publicity.

Now 82, Richard was 4 when his father started the Academy of Advertising Art in a loft on Kearny Street. The rent was $150 a month. "My folks never thought of buying anything because the depression scared the hell out of them," says Richard, an only child. "They lived in a small home in Burlingame that was financed with a VA loan. It cost $5,800. My mother got $33 a month as a disabled veteran and that was exactly the price of the payment."

Running the Academy was a part-time pursuit while Richard S. worked as a creative director for Sunset magazine in Menlo Park. Richard A. graduated from Burlingame High School, class of 1943, volunteered for the service and was a corpsman at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland for the duration of the war. He attended Stanford on the GI Bill and got his degree in art in 1951, at the very moment his father had decided to sell the art school. Enrollment had shrunk from a high of 200 to 35 students, and he had a buyer lined up. Richard A. had worked there summers and assumed he would work there winters, too, so he confronted his father.

"I said, 'That man you're going to sell it to is someone who doesn't have a soul," Richard recalls. "He said, 'OK, I'll give it to you, wise guy.' " There wasn't that much to give, except a built-in job as an art history teacher. His mother also had a built-in job, handling the books.

"The school was downsized for me. I had to start all over," says Richard. "There was always a chance the place would fail. There still is." He may be a doomsayer, but his timing has been right. The end of the Korean War brought a fresh supply of men on the GI Bill needing to learn a trade. Enrollment grew to 300, which he figured was max. His first graduating class was 54 students, and he says he found advertising jobs for 50 of them. He would have been 54 for 54, but the other four were illustrators who refused to go to New York, where he had jobs lined up.

"I took it as an obligation," he says.

The school was headquartered at 740 Taylor St. in a leased brick building that had once housed the French Consulate and later a Benihana Japanese restaurant. The landlord offered it to him. Stephens wasn't thinking investment. He was thinking that if he didn't buy it, escalating rent would force him out, so he came up with $118,000. "I didn't have any choice," he says. "I could see what was going to happen with those rents. They were going to kill you." Next he bought the old Arthur Murray Dance Studio at 625 Sutter St. for $350,000, "which was a rip-off," he says, "but only $15,000 down."

He never wanted to offer student housing until "a lady showed me a building on Sutter," he recalls. "She said, 'Go into the dorm business.' So I bought it for $1 million and it paid off just like that because the students clamored for it."

Now the Academy touts its dorms in a promotional book that is more elaborate than what most boutique hotels provide. "Beautiful details abound in each of our unique 'dorms,' " reads the caption below a picture of students climbing a sweeping staircase with carved bannisters and parquet floors in the Chanel Dormitory at 1916 Octavia St., by Lafayette Park. It makes you wonder what they would say about the Star - probably that it has '50s-flattop-Route-101 charm - but it was acquired too late for inclusion in the book, as was Rincon Lofts, a silvery three-story building with 33 condos and both a huge Vive Cuervo Tequila ad and, recently, a "Lofts for sale" sign on the wall, at 575 Harrison St. The best Academy address has to be the John Singer Sargent Graduate Dormitory at 1900 Jackson St., with views of the Transamerica Pyramid and the German Consulate and Danielle Steel as neighbors.

Richard would prefer not to be spread all over town. "I'd like to have one big campus but it can't be done. Where would I do it?" he says. When the old Jack Tar Hotel on Van Ness is mentioned, he says, "I've thought of that."

The Stephenses have never sold a building, they say, and most are impractical as commercial space except for their teardown or gut potential. This includes the car showroom, with 60 classics, which he plans to open someday as a free public museum. He bought the fleet on a spree, as inspiration for his auto-design students upstairs. When he is in the room, he does the talking, but when the topic comes to the Academy's unstoppable growth, he defers to his daughter, whom he calls "the Princess."

The Princess and her father weren't close when she was growing up because he was always working and she was at the Peninsula Tennis Club, working toward the No. 1 singles spot on the varsity team at Crystal Springs, the formerly all-girls school in Hillsborough.

She went off to Vassar, then University of San Francisco law school and, after four years in private practice, came to the family business right before the Quake of '89. Her brother, Scott, had already worked there six years, but he soon switched careers to become a full-time mountaineer, Elisa says.

She became in-house counsel in the true sense, moving into a studio apartment in a building at 680 Sutter St. co-owned by the Elisa Stephens Trust. "Initially when I started at the school I lived in the dorms for about five years so I could be close to the school, get a sense of what dorm life was like," she says.

Elisa was promoted to president of the university in 1992, and her station has advanced from a one-bedroom apartment at the bottom of Nob Hill to a one-bedroom house atop it. Called the Jewel Box, it is the only single-family house remaining on the block of California Street between the Huntington and Mark Hopkins hotels. It was built by a randy bachelor who dealt in vapors for women. He only needed one bedroom, but six stories to entertain otherwise. Elisa bought it in 1997 from a society doyenne who kept one person on staff at home, just to organize her opera gowns. She has kept up the opera tradition, serving in the Guild and arriving at opening night in one of the antique cars rolled off the showroom floor.

Seated on a couch in her living room one morning, Elisa, 48, discusses her home life. "I got married late," she says, then cups her hands to megaphone "last call." She met Ed Conlon at the wedding of one of her employees, always good hunting ground. They have a son, Richard Stephens Conlon, 2. Behind her is a window that faces south over her domain. In front of her, dachshunds Rudy and Archie de-fuzz a tennis ball. The only art she collects and displays at home is that of her students. "I invest in education," she says.

One could hazard a guess that she also invests in San Francisco property. According to a list the Academy submitted to the city, 22 of 27 properties, and all 13 owned residences, have been bought during her tenure as president. She estimates the family holdings to be 1 million square feet.

Elisa won't estimate its value, but the total assessed value (substantially lower than the market value) is upward of $100 million, not counting the Commodore Hotel, St. Brigid Church, the YWCA on Sutter Street, 601 Brannan St. and the Flower Mart. Most of these are either still in contract or haven't been reassessed.

The Stephenses buy buildings in their own names through a variety of trusts. Several of their properties are in the name of limited liability companies. No building is owned by the Academy as an institution. If there is an advantage, tax-wise, to owning real estate as a family and using it for a family-owned school, "we haven't found it," she claims. Academy buildings are not receiving property tax exemptions, according to assessor's aide Katie Muehlenkamp, who checked a sampling of the largest holdings. As to the buildings being owned by the Stephenses, not the institution, Elisa says that is to protect the Academy. "We're assuming the liability. We're not burdening the school with it," she says. "It's all held differently for estate planning, I don't know the ins and outs."

One building was purchased under the name 701 Chestnut Street, LLC. It is the old Gap store that was annexed by the San Francisco Art Institute, one block uphill. After failing to make a go of it, the Art Institute put the Gap building up for sale, and the Stephenses swooped down. Since the high bidder met the asking price in excess of $3 million, nobody dug too deeply into the identity of 701 Chestnut Street LLC.

There's no doubt about the identity of the plaintiff in a lawsuit with the Olympic Club, a city institution since 1855. In 2002, the downtown club sought to replace a parking garage with a new building that is adjacent to an Academy dorm at 655 Sutter St. Judging its dorm unsafe during construction, the Academy vacated the dorm for two semesters, 150 students decamping for the Cathedral Hill Hotel (which the Stephenses do not own) at a net loss of $1.6 million, according to Neil Eisenberg, attorney for the Academy.

Once construction was complete and the students moved back into the dorm, the Academy filed a $2.7 million suit against the Olympic Club in San Francisco Superior Court for damaging its building and making it unsafe for students during construction. Four years of discovery and four or five settlement conferences have failed. The trial is set to begin Oct. 15. "We wish they had been as good a neighbor to us as we have been to them," says Dennis Bouey, general manager of the Olympic Club, a few days before being deposed by Academy lawyers.

Perhaps this is one reason Richard says, "I don't like clubs. Some guy offered to get me into the Bohemian Club as an artist, but I'd never go there."

Richard is retired and living in Woodside with his wife of 50 years, Susan, but the educational philosophy he inherited from his father still governs.

He doesn't believe in requiring a portfolio or good grades for freshmen because he doesn't believe he should judge a person's potential based on what that person did or didn't do in high school.

"A guy walks in, he wants to be an artist. His grandmother said, 'Geez you're great.' He's not great at all," Richard says. "Ninety-nine percent of the people coming out of high school are all the same. They're lousy."

If they have the dedication, his faculty can teach them the rest. "It's not the Salk polio vaccine," he says. "If you can write your name, you can draw."

He has always had it in for academic faculty and tenure and all that. From the start, he hired strictly based on portfolio. "They had to be good. I didn't care what their education was. They could have been a murderer," he says. He'd take a criminal record over "some idiot that throws his paint around like a monkey. The world is full of those idiots. Most of these guys from these other schools can't draw."

The Academy has 155 full-time faculty and 990 part time, the majority contractors. Most of the full-timers, and all the part timers, are working artists, and some are industry experts flown in for a day or a weekend. Car and graphics designers are brought up from Los Angeles Fashion designers have been brought over from Europe. Fine art agents are flown in from New York to review portfolios and recruit. That's why there are two limos - one (with a "We (heart) Art" license plate) to shuttle Elisa and guests around and the other to treat incoming faculty right.

The Academy has 13 majors with 30 areas of concentration within them. Three years ago, an acting concentration was added to the motion picture and television department and actress Diane Baker, a classy 1960s ingenue, was wooed north from L.A. to run it. She didn't like the existing setup, so the Stephenses bought her a huge warehouse across from the Caltrain station in SoMa and outfitted it with a soundstage. Baker has Hollywood cred, going back to Van Nuys High where Bob Redford was no big deal and Natalie Wood was "the empty seat next to me in class." Baker can call on talent to fly up and guest lecture and occasionally perform in student films. Shirley MacLaine and Chad Lowe have visited. Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for "Ed Wood," will come up to collect an honorary doctorate from the Academy this year, and Alan Alda and Martin Scorsese are waiting in the wings. Elisa will preside over the ceremonies.

Baker is a believer in the Stephens credo that the kids have to be employable, so she is encouraging off-camera careers such as best boy and sound engineer. But not every concentration can get a student a job. Elisa's inspiration to offer "heroic sculpture" (the oversized work that Richard Serra does) in the Flower Mart space, would seem to be one.

Richard's great inspiration was to build an athletics department, motivated in part by all the free advertising other Bay Area universities get in the sports pages. Another reason was to give the students something to get their minds off the workload. As he puts it, "I said to the Princess, 'We have to give them more things to concentrate on.' When I think about Stanford or Cal, how many guys are concentrating on the curriculum? They're concentrating on a lot of other things, mostly coeds' asses."

Richard went to see John Ralston, the legendary Stanford football coach, and Ralston advised him to pursue former 49ers and Raiders tight end Jamie Williams. Williams has a doctorate in education from USF, but Richard was willing to overlook this and hired him anyway. The new athletic director prefers to be called Dr. Williams, making him the second USF-trained doctor on the top staff, after Elisa, who prefers to be called Dr. Stephens based on her JD from the law school.

"This whole journey is about a redefinition of the athlete and breaking the myth that athletics and art are mutually exclusive," Williams says. "Because we're an art school, we're not going to do anything lightweight and corny. We're competitive and tough and that's what we're striving for."

To prove he is not kidding, Williams hired Naja Gentry, a veteran dancer for both the 49ers Gold Rush and the Warrior Girls to form a cheerleading/dance squad called the Academy Dames and One Knight (to make allowance for a man). This past summer they were sequestered on Treasure Island for boot camp to get their moves down for their debut at orientation dressed in red and black, unsurprisingly the school colors.

The sports nickname is the Urban Knights and soon there will be a mascot in a suit of armor. There is already a campus fraternity, Kappa Sigma, ready to get rowdy in the stands. The Academy is applying for NCAA status and by next year Williams expects to be competing against other colleges in basketball, baseball, softball, women's volleyball, cross country, track, tennis, soccer, crew, women's rugby and possibly golf. In five years he expects to field a team in his own sport, football.

"There is a line of naysayers that don't believe it and I'm feeding on that," Williams says.

The first five basketball recruits on full scholarship have arrived on campus . One is Miranda Wiley, a 6-foot-tall fashion design major from Ohio. "It's strange for an art student to be a competitive athlete, but when you do meet them it makes sense," says Wiley, who wears a Mohawk with bangs just long enough to hang in her eyes when she is looking for the ball. "I'm here for the fashion first," she says. So are three men, who are also fashion majors, including Sebastian Voss, a 7-footer from South Carolina. The fifth recruit is woman majoring in drama.

Every afternoon at 3:15, a black bus takes them to a gym on Treasure Island. It is rented from UCSF. The Academy's own gym on Sutter Street is currently occupied by the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, a troupe that has been there 10 years and has gone public with its resistance to moving.

"We didn't realize the theater in there doesn't want to leave," says Richard. "We wanted to turn that gym over to him (Williams). There are snags. Life is full of trouble."

One snag that has dogged the Stephenses forever has been the Academy's accreditation status. Until this year, the Academy wasn't sanctioned by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which didn't bother the Stephenses as much as it bothered the other art schools in the Bay Area.

"The Art Institute loves to say we have no accreditation," says Elisa, who claims the Academy has always had national accreditation, but not the gold standard of regional accreditation issued by WASC, headquartered in Alameda. The hang-up was a requirement that 50 percent of credits be in classes outside a student's major field. To the Stephenses' way of thinking, this was both an unnecessary cost to the student and an impediment to getting them out and working. "We'd have to keep the kid in school for six years when we know they can become an artist in four," she says. In 2001, WASC reduced its requirement to 45 semester units outside the major, which works out to about 34 percent. In 2004, the Academy was informed it was WASC eligible, and after three years in process, the Academy was issued a seven-year term of accreditation, the maximum for an initial accreditation.

"The team that went there was significantly impressed that it was a sound educational experience" says Richard Winn, associate director of WASC.

WASC accreditation may be one reason attendance is up 1,500 students this fall. But the Academy hasn't had trouble attracting students in the age of cable and the World Wide Web. When MTV started carrying ads, Elisa was there with the buy, the first TV ads ever taken out by the Academy. The Internet worked its magic, too, reaching the eyes of high school seniors avoiding homework. These are the eyes that might light up at seeing what is not required on an Academy application - GPA, SAT, letters of recommendation or a portfolio. All you need is a high school diploma or equivalent. An interview is recommended, but it may be over the phone.

"I didn't do so well in high school so I could just pay my way in," says Jeff Chong, 19, a sophomore transfer from Sacramento City College studying fine art.

The acceptance rate for this year was 100 percent, compared to 77 percent for California College of the Arts (CCA) and 31 percent at the San Francisco Art Institute, according to statistics compiled by each school.

"When you have a school that does not require a portfolio, then you are not dealing with the rigor of admission that you're dealing with at California College of the Arts or the San Francisco Art Institute," says Sarah Pruden, a retired college career specialist at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. "At the same time (the Academy) offers classes in a wide range of more practical things than either of those schools do."

This fall, the elite San Francisco University High School in Pacific Heights, known for its strong art program, is sending its first graduate to the Academy in the seven years that Jon Reider has been director of college counseling. "My impression is that the Academy is training people to lead useful lives using their artistic interests," says Reider, a former admissions officer at Stanford. "They aren't pretending to teach people how to be Andy Warhol."

Kat Adams first learned about the Academy in 1994 or '95, late at night on MTV or Nickelodeon, all the way down in Southern Mississippi. It took her another 10 years to get to San Francisco as a graduate student in 2-D animation. She did her first semester online before coming to San Francisco for a year of live instruction at 540 Powell St., formerly the Erotic Art Museum. just up from Harry Denton's Starlight Room.

"Within each building there's a social life," Adams says. "Everybody's kind of spread out, so there's not a whole lot of networking. That's probably the only drawback." By the end of this past summer, Adams was already back down South. She will finish her degree in 2-D animation online while working in 3-D, wearing a costume at Disney World.

"I think that's the future, and that's not a profound statement because many people see it that way," says Elisa. "We've got 5,000 to 6,000 students who are (either) hybrid, online (or) on campus. It's interactive, it's dynamic. But we'll always have bricks and mortar."

There is evidence that she means this, starting with the $3.7 million to buy St. Brigid Church. The exterior, which dates to 1864 on the corner of Van Ness and Broadway, has been made a city landmark, and the Academy claims no nefarious plans for the interior.

"We don't use it very often, but we have no intention of prostituting that building at all. We want it to be just the way it is," says Richard, who claims to have already put $1 million into fixing the roof and restoration. It may end up costing him a lot more than that, because the St. Brigid purchase has led to many more questions being asked of the Stephenses than they would probably like to answer.

"They think they are privileged people," says San Francisco land-use attorney and gentrification watchdog Sue Hestor. "They are going through like a great swath and taking buildings off the market." Fed up with the Stephens steamroller, Hestor started poking around to see if the Academy had ever filed an Institutional Master Plan, an informational document that has been required since the 1970s. None was found.

Hestor, among others, pressed the city and about a year ago, planner Steve Wertheim contacted the Academy regarding the Institutional Master Plan. In August, the Academy submitted a 64-page working draft that sums up the holding as 27 buildings - 14 residential and 13 academic for a total of 896,075 square feet. But the list submitted shows 15 residential and 14 academic, for a total of 29, 28 owned and one - the YWCA/Lorraine Hansberry site on Sutter - leased. The Chronicle count, at least for now, is 33 - 16 academic, including the Flower Mart and the Foundry in South San Francisco, and 17 residential including the Star Motel, Rincon Lofts and a student lounge-clubhouse on Pine Street.

In the report, the Academy states, "it is important to note that the University is not a developer: 'new' buildings to the school are usually old structures that we preserve and restore. ... The school has never torn down a building it has purchased, and does not ever intend to - there is too much architectural beauty and detail that is lost in the City every year." The master plan also states, "The University has no specific development plans over the next 10 years although we always keep an eye toward the future."

Before the master plan can be finalized, a public hearing will be held. All Academy buildings will be posted and all occupants and owners within 300 feet will receive a mailer, which means they'll be papering most of the downtown quadrant, and a good part of SoMa.

Hestor, for one, is likely to be lined up for the microphone. "They have stalled this for a year and a half now," she says. It may be a while longer because the public hearing on the Institutional Master Plan cannot be held until all permit violations are corrected.

On March 7, enforcement planner Scott Sanchez sent a Notice of Alleged Violation to Academy legal coordinator Anthony Jones, asking him to provide proof of permits to convert two buildings to educational use and 14 buildings to group housing. There wasn't much of a response because there wasn't much in the way of permits to be found, according to Sanchez.

Then there is the matter of those signs, once estimated by an Academy consultant to number about 150."It ain't easy to put any signs up in this town," says Richard, unapologetically "but I get around it as much as I can."

That's about to be put to the test, too, because the Notice of Alleged Violation also asks for building permits to erect multiple signs and awnings. Last June, a meeting was held with Elisa Stephens. After the meeting, Sanchez retrieved a voicemail complaint from a preservationist claiming that the windows on the old car showroom were at that moment being replaced with windows of an inappropriate design in a heritage-rated building. As soon as he got the message, Sanchez sent out an inspector who issued a notice of violation.

"I was crestfallen after that," Sanchez says. And even more crestfallen to later learn that Elisa hadn't mentioned her recent purchase of 601 Brannan St., where she had just opened the Annual Spring Show with a reception for 1,200 art and design professionals from across the country. Since then, 601 Brannan St. has been converted from office to educational use without a permit, according to Sanchez. There are Academy signs on the building.

"We're probably looking at 29 sign cases out of 30 properties, and 17 or so use-related issues," Sanchez says. According to Larry Badiner, the planning department's chief enforcement officer, the city acts on complaints, and there were not enough to act on until St. Brigid brought it all to light. "I have to say, of any institution or large-scale corporation, this is the worst I've seen. I can't remember anything else that has so many violations," says Badiner, who has been with the planning department for 25 years, the past eight as zoning administrator. "It's been very hard for us to get their attention."

A few days after saying this, a tipster called Badiner to report that the Academy had taken over the Star Motel. Badiner and Sanchez decided to "get their attention" by driving together to the Star, a sprawling two-story structure with access on both Lombard and Greenwich streets. At the site, Sanchez talked to one of the owners who said the motel had a buyer under the name 1727 Lombard Street LLC, and was in escrow. In the meantime, the seller had rented the entire 52-room motel to the Academy. Sanchez asked to see the lease agreement and was told there wasn't one, it was a verbal contract. Sanchez came away with the impression that the Academy is the buyer.

The Star property is permitted as a tourist hotel, Sanchez says, meaning no guest can stay longer than 32 days before it becomes residential use and rent-control laws kick in. But that use, highly unlikely, will still require a building permit to document the change. The 14 rooms above the carport at the Greenwich Street entrance are in a more complicated situation because those rooms are in a low density residential district.

Attempts to reach the current owner of the Star Motel were unsuccessful.

Elisa declined to comment directly on whether the Star Motel or Rincon Lofts (the other new student residence) have been leased or bought by the Stephens entity. Responding to a request for clarification she wrote in an e-mail, "we have to find temporary solutions to ensure that housing is available to our students."

As to the broader planning and permit issues, she wrote, "there are things we have missed and clearly need to correct, there are some issues we believe the city is mistaken about and needs to understand better, and there are many issues that are ambiguous and in need of clarification. Such is the nature of planning departments and local politics. I am confident that we will resolve these things, although it will take time and patience."

Ten days after sending this, and after as long as 25 years in violation, Elisa, through her attorney, filed for conditional-use permits for 14 Academy properties. Included are St. Brigid Church, the warehouse-car showroom, the Star Motel and nine other residences, according to Sanchez.

Any rejection by the planning department would put the Academy in a bind because it guarantees housing to every student who wants it. The neediest are foreign students. Visas require them to be full time, ringing up a minimum of $14,400 per year for undergraduates and $15,600 for graduate students. With housing, that brings the total to around $20,000 per student. In return, the Academy has an entire ESL department dedicated to helping them.

To the Stephenses, this is another example of the Academy's worldwide reach. "We feel we can throw a punch," Richard says. "The best school at one time was the Art Center (College of Design) in Pasadena and I honestly feel that we're better now."

Given the history, it can only be assumed that better follows bigger.

"I feel like it's a family business, sure," he says, looking warmly at Elisa, seated beside him. "I want my daughter to have it, and my son. I want it to go on."

A few days later, Elisa, is sitting in her Jewel Box with her dachshunds when the presumed heir, Richard the Third, is brought in by his nanny after a romp around Huntington Park. Asked if the school will be passed along to the fourth generation, she says "I'm working for the school, so if he's interested, that's a possibility."

Academy of Art University

Founded: 1929

Status: Private, for-profit

Location: 33 buildings in San Francisco, mostly downtown and South of Market.

Size: 11,000 students.

Cost: $600 per unit; $700 per unit for graduate school.

Financial aid: $1 million per year in scholarships, $11 million in interest-free payment plans.